Abstract:

Talking about long narratives in Classical Turkish poetry, the first thing that comes to mind are the ‘masnavis’. Poems written using this poetry form structured with short patterns of aruz prosody mostly because they involve long narratives, have covered numerous stories about religion, politics, ethics, Sufism, love etc. Masnavis written above love from among all other topics mentioned above, have a special place in classical Turkish poetry. One of the love masnavis which are very common in classical Turkish poetry are the “gül-ü-bülbül masnavis”. Many different poets have covered this wellknown love story between the rose and the mockingbird in their poems under titles like gül-ü-bülbül, bülbülnâme or bülbüliyye and have written many different masnavis about it. One of the poets who wrote gül-ü-bülbül masnavis was İlmî. As a 19th century poet, İlmî is originally from Maraş in Turkey. While the Poet’s exact date of birth is unknown, his full name was Ali İlmî and was known with the nickname “Çelebi-zâde”. The poet was actually a descendent of Nurullah Çelebi who was known to be a descendent of Prophet Hussein who had moved to Elbistan in 15th century and of Zeynelâbidîn. This study covers the masnavi titled Bülbüliyye written by İlmî. The study presents general information on gül-ü-bülbül masnavis, emphasizes the place of Bülbüliyye among other gül-ü-bülbül masnavis, discusses the possibility of the piece to have been written by Çelebizâde Ali İlmî from Maraş, and analyzes the piece in terms of masnavi style, structure and content and presents a transcribed version of the piece.